1. Field of the Invention
In an image pickup apparatus such as an electronic camera or the like, the invention relates to a file management system of an image pickup apparatus such that in case of storing recording image data as a file into a storage device, even if a storage medium is exchanged, so long as the-data is recorded by the same image pickup apparatus, a peculiar file name is automatically formed for a recording image.
2. Related Background Art
Hitherto, in case of recording an image onto a recording medium by an electronic camera, although it is necessary to allocate a name to a file of the image, a method whereby a number to be updated every photographing operation is included in the file name has been proposed. In such-an apparatus, however, when the recording medium is exchanged, the number included in the file name of the image is reset. Therefore, there is a case where a plurality of files of the same name exist.
Since a conventional file management system of image data is constructed as mentioned above, there are the following problems.
That is, in the case where the file name is formed as mentioned above, when it is intended to transfer data from the storage device of the electronic camera to a computer, there is a possibility such that files of the same name also exist in an auxiliary storage device of the computer. In such a case, the user has to take a procedure such that the file existing in the auxiliary storage device of the computer is overwritten or, since the same file name exists, a message to instruct to change the file name is displayed, or the like.
Although the number of file names which can be formed is determined by the number of digits of numerical values which are included in the file name, in case of forming a file while sequentially including a series of numerical values, for example, starting from 0 among numerical values of five digits into the file name, the number of numerical values which can be used is equal to 100000 within a range from “00000” to “99999”. Therefore, file names exceeding 100000 cannot be formed. In order to avoid such a limitation, for example, there is a method of returning the numerical values included in the file name to the original numerical values in a manner such that, for instance, the file name which is formed subsequently to “IMG99999. JPG” is set to “IMG00000. JPG”. In this case, however, if the file of “IMG00000. JPG” still exists in the storage device, the file which has originally existed will be overwritten.
Since numerical values to be included in the file name are determined by examining the file names of the files existing in the recording medium to record data, in the case where the recording medium is exchangeable, the file of the same file name is formed on a plurality of recording media.